16 Comments

You need to add Congressman Jeff Miller (FL-01) to you ad. His opponent, Joe Roberts, will add it to his website, http://www.JoeRoberts.us

Mark Stanley in Pensacola, FL | Wednesday, October 10 at 07:44 PM

Your TV ad is grossly misleading and are just dead WRONG about the President’s veto of the S-Chip Health Insurance expansion. When he said “poor kids first,” he meant he wants to make sure all poor kids have health insurance first. The proposed expansion would add MIDDLE CLASS children whose parents CAN afford health insurance, they simply choose not to carry it so they can spend the money on more desirable things (like BMW’s and Mercedes cars and big houses).. This is wrong! Furthermore, smokers shouldn’t have to pay for other peoples’ kids’ health insurance! How did they get addicted in the first palce? From the government and tobacco lobbies’ collusion in the LIE that smoking was not addictive and not harmful to your health! Now we punish those smokers by making them pay for other peoples’ health insurance? And do you know how many smokers with cancer now can’t afford their own healthcare…but you would make them pay for others? And why not put a similar tax on ALCOHOL. Surely the effects of alcohol both socially and health-wise are far worse than that of smoking and deserve an equally punitive SIN TAX. Smokers can smoke a pack and drive a car….alcoholics can’t drink 25 drinks and still DRIVE. They kill people in drunk driving, they abuse their families, cost society tons of money (more than smokers) for the consequences of their drinking. This bill neeeds to be re-written to NOT include middle class kids and to be paid for by EVERYBODY. If we’re going to pay lip service to children being our future, we should ALL be paying for it and not just one small addicted sick group of people. And how WILL they sustain funding when lots of people finally quit smoking because of the cost prohibitiveness of their habit? What provisions were included for that eventuality?

Marta K | Thursday, October 11 at 11:03 AM

It’s called using protection. I should not have to pay for ignorant people procreating, without the ability to provide for the outcome. We already allow too many lazy people free rides, why should we allow families with incomes of 80,000 a year a free ride. We shouldn’t, get a second job like everyone else and keep it in your pants!! The other option is to stop paying people to be homeless and reallocate the funds for healthcare.

Brent in Austin, Texas | Thursday, October 11 at 11:05 AM

To Brent in Austin: Agreed….and my previous point was that this group, Americans United For Change deliberately misled the public with their TV ad which makes NO MENTION whatsoever of how the measure was to be paid for (by SMOKERS ONLY). Until they ALSO say that in their ad, the ad is misleading.
That’s the problem in this country….people use the “....but what about the little children” bleeding heart cry to get people to approve ANY spending measure without ever looking at where the money will come from or the long term implications. I’m sick of it.
Hey, here’s an idea. Why not add a tax to the liability insurance paid for by doctors to help pay for all these kids to have health insurance. I wonder what lobby would campaign for and against that?

Marta K | Thursday, October 11 at 12:03 PM

...or wait. Even better; let’s have all the legislators on the state and federal levels take a reduction in their OWN cushy health care benefits to help pay for all these kids’ health insurance! I think that’s a GREAT idea!

Marta K | Thursday, October 11 at 12:05 PM

Have any of these writers priced health insurance lately? Do any of them know the true statistics of what happens to people and families who suffer huge health costs - due to no fault of their own - incurring excessively high doctor and hospital bills. Even many middle to upper middle income families are suffering with cuts in coverage and increases in deductibles and premiums for health care coverage. Please - do some research before making your assessments and cruel judgements. I would love for my tax dollars to go toward a program for health insurance for children, instead of this awful, tragic, hellish invasion of Iraq - for which my heart breaks every day.

Patricia in Brownsburg, IN | Thursday, October 11 at 04:59 PM

This latest move by Bush shows how he continues to push the small people around in our country. If you don’t have a lot of money to impress him you don’t get the time of day from him. It is tragic he will spend more money in Iraq than in our own country for our own children. Being born with a silver spoon in his mouth and never having to struggle to pay the bills makes him not the person I want making life decisions for our country.

Tira in Grand Forks AFB ND | Thursday, October 11 at 05:20 PM

I can’t believe that in such an educated society as we have, that we are still debating whether or not we can provide healthcare for every child in this country. Let alone every citizen in this country.

When will get past this “Socialized Medicine, NEVER! Socialized Warfare, Just Fine!” attitude?

Can’t you just imagine how much healthcare you could provide with the $580,000,000,000 we’ve spent & are spending on this nefarious war on terror?

Wake up America & by god, please evolve.

Rich O'Grady in Clermont, FL | Thursday, October 11 at 07:29 PM

Marta K. Doesn’t list what part of the country she’s living in, but clearly its rural with a very LOW cost of living for her to be under the deluded and ignorant perception that with a gross, not net, income of 80,000 people are driving mercedes and suv’s. First of all, 80,000 after taxes is really 60,000. Now deduct the cost of rent, daycare, food, cars, car insurance, utilities, gas, etc and PLEASE tell me how I’m supposed to afford the $800 a month for health insurance for a family of 4 with small children? People need to wake up to the reality of our middle class. The poor and the illegals have all the help they can get, and American kids of parents who choose to get up and work for a living everyday are left with nothing. Our priorities are disgusting in this country. And if you’re pissed about the money coming from smokers, QUIT SMOKING. The money THAT would save the american public in medicare costs etc for heart disease, lung cancer would more than cover the cost of insuring working class children. Better yet, lets take our troops out of Iraq, and use the money to fund the schip plan, and rebuild our struggling military to its former glory. This administration is spitting in the face of children and our troops.

lauren m. in phoenix,az | Friday, October 12 at 04:17 PM

Everybody is a victim in America and President Bush is to blame for all the wrong choices that people make to account for thier lives of destitude. It’s called “personal responsibility” people.
If you can’t afford to have four children-don’t have four children. If you wan’t more spendable income-stop voting for Democratic canidates that will stop at nothing to tax us ALL into poverty.
President Bush does not intend to eliminate the schip program, only to limit the increases to the program as to limit a already bloated government. The Government can’t even keep Social Security a viable program for my age group, why would we trust them with our healthcare?
American’s have become spoiled and ungrateful for what America has to offer. Blame someone else for your situation before looking in the mirror and tax someone else before thinking about the outcome of your choices.
As for me, I continue to drive to work and pay my taxes to pay for people that can’t seem to catch a break. Only in America.

Brian L in Minneapolis, MN | Saturday, October 13 at 12:14 AM

I’m glad that my Republican representative, Vern Buchanan, voted in favor of the SCHIP bill. I may not agree with him on everything, but at least he got this vote right and said “our kids are worth it.”

It is despicable that a supposedly civilized, first world nation such as our own wouldn’t provide healthcare for children regardless of financial situations.

Christian Marble in USF, Tampa, FL | Monday, October 15 at 05:32 PM

I am definitely not a Bush fan but his veto is right on the mark. We should not cover people who make $20+k a year or adults. Expanding it would move us into socialized medicine and would be a disaster. Competition is a good thing and should remain.

If you want to go after something, start with US having to pay for illegals’ healthcare plus the costs that are associated with birthright citizenship to illegals. How do you justify taking from our seniors and giving it to illegals?

Why don’t American’s United for Change do something about that?

Mary Steele in Yorktown, VA | Monday, October 15 at 05:44 PM

If you want to stop the nonsense spending, start reporting those that are hiring and harboring illegals for which you pay their healthcare. If we go to the emergency room, we walk out with a bill, they don’t! We are victims of discrimination.

Report them to ICE.gov on the Contact Us page, via the About Us page.

1-866-347-2423

Mary Steele in Yorktown, VA | Monday, October 15 at 06:17 PM

You’re ads are extremely misleading. At least equate healthcare with a topic that makes sense, unlike the war. My brother was in Iraq three times and he paints a very different picture than your liberal organization. I hope you all burn.

Dave in Minneapolis, MN | Wednesday, October 17 at 08:38 AM

The Fall of Democracy

When the thirteen colonies were still a part of England, Professor Alexander Tyler wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic over two thousand years previous to that time:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.